Using Xfin without connecting a bank
Three ways in, and only one of them touches your bank. What works identically, and the two things that are genuinely slower.
Plenty of people will not hand a budgeting app their bank login, and that is a reasonable position rather than a problem to be talked out of. Xfin is built so the connection is optional: every feature works on a manual account, and the reserve, the goals and Fin cannot tell the difference.
On this page
The three ways in
- Tell Fin in plain words. “I have about $2,800 in chequing and $400 in cash.” Fin drafts the accounts and you confirm them. Nothing leaves your phone to do this except the sentence you typed.
- Import a statement. A CSV or a PDF, read into transactions and accounts in one go.
- Add an account with a form. Type, name, balance, and optionally credit limit, APR, minimum payment and institution.
Connecting a bank through Plaid is a fourth option, not a prerequisite. If you want it later, that page explains who Plaid is and what they can see.
Importing a statement, and which file to pick
Both formats work, and there is a real difference between them worth understanding before you choose:
- CSV is read on your phone. Start to finish, on the device. No request is made and nothing leaves.
- PDF is read for you. Your phone pulls the text out of the file and sends that text to be turned into a transaction list. If the PDF is a scan with no text in it, the file itself is sent so it can be read as an image. That is a whole statement rather than a summary, which is why the privacy policy spells it out.
So if the point of skipping the bank connection was that nothing about your money should leave the device, export CSV from your bank rather than PDF. Most banks offer both on the same screen.
Either way, the import shows you a review list before it writes anything. It flags likely duplicates against what you already have (same date, same amount, similar description), so importing two overlapping statements does not double your history. It also pulls the recurring flows out of the statement and hands them to you as a checklist, so a year of rent payments becomes one tick rather than twelve forms.
Keeping a manual balance right
A manual account's balance is computed, not typed: it is the starting balance you gave plus every transaction since. That means it stays right on its own as long as you log what you spend, and Fin makes logging a sentence rather than a form. “$45 on lunch”.
When it does drift from your real statement, do not guess and do not edit history. Open the account and use Reconcile balance: enter the figure your statement shows, and Xfin posts a single adjustment so the list still adds up to the truth. One visible correction beats a dozen invisible ones.
What works exactly the same
- The reserve. Cash, plus income landing in the window, minus bills landing in it, minus what your goals hold. A manual chequing account counts toward it identically to a connected one.
- Goals. Money set aside is held back from what you can spend, whatever kind of account it sits in, as long as that account is chequing, cash or savings. A goal pointed at a brokerage tracks progress but reserves nothing.
- Fin. Asking, logging, the affordability check, setting up bills and income. None of it knows or cares how the account got there.
- Categories and the focus category. Sorted from your transactions, not from the bank's own labels.
- Net worth. Manual assets and debts count the same.
The two things that are genuinely slower
We would rather say this than let you find it out:
- Detection needs history to read. Recurring bills and income are found by spotting the same merchant on a rhythm, so it wants two or three logged rows carrying a real merchant name before it will suggest anything. A connected account arrives with months of history at once; typing gets there in a few weeks. You can always add a bill yourself in the meantime, and an imported statement short-circuits the wait entirely.
- Nothing updates itself. A connected balance refreshes; a manual one moves when you log something. That is the trade, and Reconcile balance is the release valve.